Another Perspective on Sharing Suffering

It's been so long since I last posted--again! That outflow onto the beach that I pictured bearded with ice a week or so ago...

...is now shorn of snow and flowing freely.

As should I be, I can't help but feeling.
I don't know what's preventing me from writing more here.
It's true, I'm not settled on where "here" is right now. I've been talking about migrating this blog and changing its appearance for months now. The superficial blogger-internal face-lift I've given it recently seems only to have rendered it buggier and less user-friendly (user-unfriendlier?) so I may undo that.
And the blog displacement and stagnating migration intent are only highly convenient metaphors for what's going on in my own life at the moment.
I did just see 22:22:22 on March 22, which should have told me it's time to get ready for bed, but it made me superstitiously happy and excited to write at least "something." I do have a pretty neat photos post almost ready to go, too.
But the truth is, I had far too much work this past week. And my faculties seem to be diminished and less than equal to overburdened weeks. Apprehension of loss of my own particular brilliance on which I've always been able to rely has rammed me further into the posthole of despair, the tunnel stopped at one end.
Manic seems such a long way away, and meds only make the posthole tunnel less deep and final.
And I confess it's been so long since I've eaten or drunk anything without accompanying punishing nausea and pain, I'm starting to drive myself crazy with the frantic mental scrabblings of what I might add in or (more likely) take out of my diet. And this without "indiscretions" or castor oil punishments for well over a week.

I can't see the woods for the words, as I am saying a lot at the moment (quoting myself from a half-written poem). But I am recognizing how right my wonderful naturopath is in emphasizing that words can be my salvation. As I've been trying to think through my creative thesis for my MFA--it really is coming to that time already!--and suffering through everything I laid out above and many other life stresses, which make it harder to focus, I found a path by meditating on words. Passion is a tense of "suffering," and compassion (from Latin) or sympathy (from Greek) mean suffering together, sharing the experience. But if you choose to be a victim of your suffering, your passion, you are christ on the cross, excruciated, a grand and solo passion that can only be venerated or turned away from in pity and horror.
In other words, I need to acknowledge my sufferings as normal for someone in my circumstances rather than thinking of them as extraordinary and specific to me (even if my behaviors sometimes exacerbate the pain)--and then I can write about them in such a way that my readers will see themselves and suffer together--sympathize. Without the possibility of sympathy, what I write will be alienating; the crucified figure left alone in a desert place, the paradox of standing out when no one can bear to look. (After I came out of my worst period of anorexia seven or eight years ago, which was beyond excruciating for anyone who had to be around me, let alone for me, some friends and colleagues came up to me and shared that they had had to look away during that time; watching me die was too much to bear. The book of my life unreadable.)
I am learning to write a book for companions (sharers of sustenance) and compatients (sharers in suffering).

Drowning in Gray; Rainbow Salad

Last night, it snowed heavy, white-out, huge, fat, fist-sized flakes. We sat inside the snow-shaker with the outside light on, watching the show.

 Later on, it warmed up above freezing for the first time in a month, and rained.

Not enough to wash away all the snow, but enough to keep the skies gray. Enough that when you sit in the outhouse, there's a drip of gelid water that lands right on your knee. And drips again.

I'm struggling with the gray since returning from Israel. Yes, the rain washed the snow-cover from the spruce trees, and they're my favorite green; yes, there are still some mountain ash berries on the trees, scarlet red. But mostly, there's gray, there's blanketing white. I feel like I'm in a dream where my limbs are numbed to robotic, leaden treads and when I take a step, it sends me in a slow-motion spiral so that where I thought was was going is on the other side of the floor. An end of everything seems so attractive right now--just turn out the lights and be finished in one last gush of red.

But I'm not supposed to think that way! I go through the motions.
For Phil's birthday, I even made a rainbow salad, so that all the colors could be in a bowl, if not before my eyes.

 Of course, the light makes any kind of colorful photography kind of grayed over...
Salad was:
Pomegranate seeds (red--persephone in the underworld)
shredded carrot (orange)
The dressing (see below) (yellow)
lemon zest (yellow)
shredded ginger (yellow)
spinach (green)
purple cabbage (that blue-purple end of things)

Tahini-Mustard Dressing
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon flax meal
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 tablespoon coconut sugar
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons miso
1 teaspoon black pepper
water to thin as necessary

Blend all together, adding water as necessary. This mixes up really easily, would probably even be doable by hand, but even an underpowered blender can easily do it. (I used my hand-held blender, as you can see in the salad pic.)

Even in the pillows of gray, there can be light deliciousness...